Winston Churchill was right

Winston Churchill (1874-1965) said many memorable things, among them being something about "blood, toil, tears, and sweat" and "an iron curtain has descended across the Continent" and "I never stand when I can sit, and I never sit when I can lie down", but today I want us to think about and explore a little bit the saying that England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

[Editor's note. Except it probably wasn't Churchill at all who made that remark. It has been attributed to several people including George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and others. No one knows for certain who said it first, but in his 1887 short story, "The Canterville Ghost", Oscar Wilde did pen the following: "Indeed, in many respects, she was quite English, and was an excellent example of the fact that we have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language." —RWP]

Elsewhere in past posts we have mentioned some of the things Brits and Yanks refer to differently, such as lorry (truck), napkin (diaper), biscuit (cookie), cookie (cracker), cracker (noisemaker), lift (elevator), fag (cigarette). The list goes on and on. And we have talked about our differences in spellings and word endings, such as -ise (-ize), -re (-er), -our (-or). At the risk of repeating myself, the list goes on and on.

Today let's explore two more areas, music and money.

Most people in America, musical or not, are probably familiar with musical notation in the form of notes on a staff preceded by a treble clef or a bass clef. (There is also a clef that is referred to as alto, tenor, or baritone clef depending on where it is placed on the staff, but we won't go down that particular rabbit trail.) And most of us know that these notes have names like whole note, half note, quarter note, eighth note. There are even briefer increments of time (that is, faster notes when strung together) known as sixteenth note, thirty-second note, and sixty-fourth note. Okay, so maybe most people in America don't know that at all, but stay with me for a minute.

In Britain, the people don't know any of those names. Instead, their naming system for the very same squiggles on a musical manuscript are breve (whole note), minim (half note), crotchet (quarter note), and quaver (eighth note), and the even briefer notes are called semi-quaver (sixteenth note), demisemiquaver (thirty-second note), and—God help us all—hemidemisemiquaver (sixty-fourth note).

Since there is a semibreve or whole note that equals four beats in 4/4 time, it follows as the night the day (thank you, Laertes) that there must also be a breve or double whole note that equals eight beats in 4/4 time. And there is.

I'm feeling faint. Let us move on to money.

Britain changed its currency to the decimal system more than 50 years ago, and now there are 100 pence to the pound, but I distinctly remember a time when 12 pence made a shilling and 20 shillings made a pound sterling. The pound sterling was worth five American dollars ($5.00 USD) and a shilling was about the same value as our American quarter (a quarter of a dollar). Americans had dollars, half-dollars, quarters, dimes (ten cents), nickels (five cents), and pennies (one cent) and used a cent sign (¢) for all coins less than a dollar; the Brits used 's' for shillings and 'd' for pence. In my tireless research I learned that 's' and 'd'were used to refer to shillings and pence, respectively, because in Roman times coins of similar values were called in Latin solidus and denarius. England also had a half-penny coin which was abbreviated 'ob' for the even smaller value Roman coin obulus.

The pound began losing value and for quite a while its value was about $2.40 USD, which made the shilling worth slightly more than an American dime. Nowadays the pound is worth $1.34 USD, making the no-longer-produced shilling worth 6.7 cents or slightly more than an American nickel.

I also remember that the Canadian dollar was worth $1.10USD for a long time, but today it is worth 71 cents. Another rabbit trail.

Don't even get me started on weights and messures.

I will close by wishing you a Happy Columbus Day or a Happy Indigenous Peoples Day on Monday, whichever you prefer to celebrate.

Blogging can be so educational. For example, this week I learned fron jabblog's blog's comment section that a great many people did not know that such a thing as a digital piano existed.

Until next time, I remain your intrepid roving correspondent, rhymeswithplague